Merchant Services
Expense Management Services (EMS) believes that Truth, Education and transparency is the key to helping merchants understand how to deal with this very complicated expense.
Did you know that the merchant isn’t alone when they say they have a hard time understanding their credit card statement. Through the years I have noticed that most processing agents, bank representatives, and even some top executives with processing companies don’t understand how to analyze a statement.
With over 250 different interchange rates and several dozen fees who really can? You need to be an expert at interchange management to be fully capable of deciphering a statement and coming up with the true effective rate. Our team of experts are some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry.
Is the rate really important when it comes to choosing a processor? No, in many cases this is just not true. The banks and processors sell the merchants on rates and the merchants assume that the rate is the most important way to choose a processor. But this couldn’t be far from the truth. First of all if you don’t know what the cost is to the processor how do you know how to negotiate or know if you are getting a good rate to begin with. You must take in to consideration many factors when it comes to achieving a fair cost to accepting credit cards. I have seen many cases where the merchant is being over charged even if they had a great rate. Processors may add other fees that shouldn’t be there or charge the merchant for a POS system or terminal that they simply do not need. In some cases the merchant was simply not placed in the correct merchant category type thereby causing them to be charged more year after year. The EFFECTIVE RATE (rate + all other fees) not the rate is what’s important.
If you haven’t had your statement looked at within the last four months its time. Processors in many cases without the knowledge of the merchant will raise rates and fees. They may have placed a notice awhile back on a statement but did they have to raise the rate? EMS will continue to analyze the merchant’s statements for the life of that merchant. This assures that the rates and fees promised will continue. If we find that the processor raised the rates we will get a full refund for the merchant. This is what sets EMS apart from all other processors. The end result is the merchant never having to worry about this expense ever again.
Electronic Payment Consulting
Service to Save You Money
We serve hundreds of companies in every major industry, including retail, hospitality, professional trade services, manufacturing, business to business and business to government.
Not a credit card processor
Expense Management Services (EMS) is not a credit card processor. We are an expense management firm specializing in reducing fees associated with merchant accounts. We work for you to save you money. We analyze your merchant credit card processing account and create a plan to reduce your credit card processing costs. Like an attorney or CPA we offer expert advice to our clients; our fee is based on actual results. We realize savings in over 87% of the businesses we audit with average savings between 20% to 45%.
No savings, No fee
You have no obligation unless we save you money. If we help you, you’ll see a major reduction in your merchant credit card processing fees as early as your next monthly billing cycle. In most cases there is no need to change your merchant credit card processing provider.
More than just renegotiating better pricing, EMS services do not end with helping their clients get the best pricing. In many cases achieving better pricing terms with the existing company is just a small part of the overall picture, many times we have realized about half of our uncovered savings by identifying procedures at the point of sale that enable transactions to be processed in the least costly method.
Expense Management Services helps businesses effectively reduce this growing expense category and in most cases, without ever having to switch providers. Unlike a processing company who derives their profit by how much they can charge each merchant for processing services, EMS earns by how much they save their clients. “There are enough credit card processing companies out there. Merchants want to save money but most don’t want to switch companies to do it. I can’t blame them. We wanted to take our expertise in this dynamic industry and provide a service that directly aligns our interests with our clients while providing an undeniable impact on our clients’ profitability. If our clients retain our services and we don’t offer a quantifiable reduction in expenses, then I don’t think my clients should have to pay,” says Goodman. EMS earns their fees as a percentage of the incremental savings that they help their clients obtain.
Review Process:
- Company sends in four (4) months of recent processing statements.
- We review your case to see how or if we can help you. Would you believe that most merchants are absolutely convinced they have already done everything possible to reduce their merchant account fees and that there are no more savings to be had? Yet, in over 87% of the cases we review for these same merchants we can and do reduce this cost even more and we are not talking about a few dollars here and there. Our average client adds over $11,000 per year to their bottom line.
- The Game plan: Following the signed Letter of Engagement, we schedule a brief call to go over the anticipated savings and strategy to get there. Although we will be doing all the work and there are no action items for you during this call we use this as an opportunity to help you understand the “what”, “why”, and “how” the savings will be achieved. Since we work for you, you always have the final say in terms of our plan.
- Results & Review: Following the implementation of our strategy we report the quantified savings results as well as audit your billing for accuracy, review and report in plain English any areas of improvement in terms of Interchange qualification, explain exactly what needs to be done, as well as consider and advise on feasible alternative payment methods or emerging technology that could further reduce costs and create a plan to reduce your credit.
